Our mentor Mrs. Erika Phillips, more about her here, had us open up the night with Ron's homework assignment from last week; Write a monolog from the aspect of an inanimate object that might be found on or with a military person.

His amazing story showed us how interesting it is to see how a belt buckle could be so proud but yearn to understand its owner. We talked about how the monolog from the belt buckle showed us its character, were it had been and what it could possibly want.

We had a few other reads and Frank read his piece about a trained killer in a normal job interview.

Our quick write exercise for the meeting:

Write a list of different turning points or events that affected our military careers.

Now pick the one that stands out the most and write about it. 10mins

The group's stories brought up some funny, serious or real moments that most of us could connect with. What I ended up writing is at the end of this post.

Assignment for next week

Write out a scene from that moment that changed your military career.

Rules and structure: No more than 3 characters, keep it to one setting

Title

"just working title for now"

Characters: "lists the names and a few words description"

Setting: "Where & When"

At rise: "means what do you see when the curtain or light are raised"

Name of Character

Dialogue here "if their is a stage direction put it in put it in brackets when it happens in the dialogue; — n an instruction to an actor or director, written into the script of a play"

Name of Character

Dialogue here

Print out copies, 1 for every character and bring it in on Monday for us to read your scene.

Attached at the bottom is a MS Word Stage Play Format that you could you.

If you would like more examples or information on how to format a stage play, click here.

I am looking forward to seeing what we all come up for next Monday night.

Here is a revision of what I wrote for the quick write prompt.

It’s 3 AM and I am sitting on my rack in full gear looking
at my Marines. We were out for 8 hours straight and I should be getting something
to eat, trying to cool off; but all I can do is sit here quietly and watch.
They are playing video games, un-pausing that movie or finishing that letter
home as if they were gone only for a second. All I can do is be still and feel so torn! If we make it home do I
leave these boys to raise my boys? I can’t stop replaying in my head the inception of these feelings from yesterday.

SSgt what kind of award are you hoping for from this tour?

…I hope I don’t get an award!... My award is getting back to
take care of my boys.

The replay stops... crap we just got another call, out the door we go, locked and
loaded…